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This morning, worshipplanning.com was updated to version 5.4.0, and we wanted to share some of the exciting details.

Text Notifications
worshipplanning.com has offered SMS text notifications for several years (you can learn more about how it works here), but now team leaders and account admins can enable SMS Text messaging on behalf of users. Before this update, only the end user could enable text notifications by logging into their own WP account. The was done to reduce the risk of people being unexpectedly charged for text messages. Now that “unlimited” texts is much more popular, and it is easy for recipients to stop messages, we feel the benefits outweigh the risks.

When an appropriately-privileged planner adds or edits a user, they will be able to indicate which number(s) support text messaging by using the corresponding checkbox. Once checked, and the country is selected, a new communication method will be set up for the user without any validation being required.

Also, any SMS text recipient can stop all text messages from WP by replying “STOP” to any message (and restart the flow of messages by replying “START” to any message from WP).

SongSelect™ Integration Improvement
Like text notifications, SongSelect integration has been part of worshipplanning.com for a number of years. The integration has been per planner, meaning that if Jim Planner and Jill Planner both wanted to use the SongSelect integration in WP, they had to each authorize that integration.

The update we rolled out with version 5.4.0 adds a “church level” integration, meaning that church account admins now have the option to authorize an integration for use by all planners. Technically only security level 1 (Worship Editors) and up could use the church-level SongSelect integration, since security level 0 users (Ministry Planners) can’t edit the worship flow or song library.

If both a church and an individual are integrated, WP will use the individual’s integration. This allows churches to track specific usage (on the SongSelect side) for individual SongSelect accounts.

More Location Settings
Also included in this update is greater management over your locations. To start with, we’ve added a new “Locations Management” screen where admins can centrally add, delete and rename the various locations used by your church.

Next, we add “locations” as an attribute setting to your teams. Perhaps you have a different worship team for each location. You no longer have to shoehorn the name the location into the team name field, like “Worship Team – Downtown Campus”.

And we’ve added a location filter on the team management page so that you can easily hide teams not at a specific location. By the the way, the location filter setting is remembered as you move about the site. Finally, the People Scheduling page had its location filter upgraded in the following ways:

Your filter setting will also show/hide teams based on their location settings, making it easier to figure out which teams are appropriate to schedule for that location.

You can now filter by more than one location. Perhaps you want to see the worship team schedule for this weekend, across two or three locations, at once. Now you can.

We hope you find these updates useful in making your planning process simpler. Our team continues to work on updates frequently asked for by customers. And, as always, your feedback is welcome.